The Cut

Anthony Cartwright

If Brexit has made you depressed (whichever way you voted, or if you didn't), this is not going to help. It is an examination of the despair behind the way that people voted - and about the way that people felt ignored and that they did not count. It is about industrial decline and the shattering of a way of life - and a glimpse into the heart of darkness. It will definitely make you think.

Extract

He lies on the bed tired, shouldn't be this tired. All of them the same. He hopes his mother has a sleep this afternoon. Tiredness has worked through everything, like the damp that warps the walls and the back fence and the wallpaper in the bathroom, has worked its way through the hills themselves, the undermining of the tunnels and the great caverns that shift below them, slowly, not in human time, bent everything out of shape in the end. But the tiredness is human, that much is certain, and the damage is done.

Parallels